


the way we look to a distant constellation that’s dying in a corner of the sky

by Lirazel



Category: Skins (UK)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-19
Updated: 2011-10-19
Packaged: 2017-10-24 19:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things, Michelle should have known, really are inevitable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the way we look to a distant constellation that’s dying in a corner of the sky

It’s Sid that she’s kept up with best (well, besides Jal, but Jal’s _Jal_ , and even though Tony always said that their friendship didn’t make any sense, it never mattered. Michelle knows she wasn’t always the best friend she could have been, but there were times, especially when Tony had found a new way to break her heart—and that’s his real talent, she knows; he could never run out of new and fresh ways to shatter her completely, and wasn’t it just _like_ him to get _hit by a damn bus_ right after she thought they had begun to fix things—when she forgot who she was apart from Tony and what he’d made her. And it was during those times that she’d look at Jal and be able to remember again). And maybe that makes sense: they’re Tony’s creatures in ways no one else has ever had been, both of them moving around him like satellites (and occasionally crashing into one another, but the wreckage was still moving in orbit around _Tony_ ’s star bright) and never really able to escape. She knows, without either one of them ever having to voice it, that both of them envied Effy more than they could say: that she could love him and have him love her and not be pulled into his black hole—and still remain herself. Neither one of them were strong enough to manage that, though, and even now that she hasn’t seen Tony in years—in _years_ —she’s still finding new ways each day that he shaped her (shaped? That sounds too soft. Sanded her down, carved her out, hammered and scooped and kneaded and fired). And Sid’s the only one who can understand that.

It’s not like they talk every day, or even every week—or month. But there are emails, out of the blue (and Sid’s never been particularly good at expressing himself through words—he left that to Tony—and so the messages are filled with typos and sentence fragments and awkwardness, but somehow his _Sidness_ comes through, and it feels a little bit like home), and nights when she’d be huddled up in the tangle of pillows and blankets on her bed (or even climbing inside the duvet like Jal taught her that Chris did, and suddenly Chris’s loss is sharp and acid-bright as ever), when her skin feels so thin she’s sure the sharp edges of her will burst right through it like broken glass through wet tissue paper, and she sobs into her phone (the room lit up blue by the light of her mobile’s screen) to Sid in an undertone, careful not to wake her roommate.

But those nights were rare and became even rarer as time passed, and mostly she’s been good. She surprised herself by loving university, even the classes, and she did well. Not brilliantly, not like Tony probably did, but well enough for a warm shine of pride. And she made friends, good ones (even if none of them could understand her quite the way that Jal can, that Sid can), and dated guys who actually treated her well, and even if the breakups hurt—and they did—it was a simple kind of pain, straight-forward and dimming over time, and when it was over, it was _over_ (it had never been over with Tony. Like a rollercoaster you thought you knew, reaching what you think is the end with your stomach plopping back into its place and your grip on the bar in front of you loosening—and then, suddenly, there’s another drop, one you hadn’t braced yourself for, and it’s not over. It’s never over). The three years passed more quickly than she would have believed, and suddenly she’s living in London with a flatmate who reminds her a little too much of Maxxie for all he’s six foot five with a Trinidad accent. She’s working part-time as an interpreter for the government (she studied a lot of languages in university, and loved them) and part-time as a writer for a fashion blog that seems to actually be taking off, and even though she feels like she’s always running back and forth between the two, she can’t decide which she likes more. She makes enough money to occasionally splurge on a new pair of heels or a cashmere sweater, and her style has shifted a little bit more to the classic side (less skin, because she works for the _government_ but with pops of unexpected color or particularly funky accessories to give her an edge) but she knows she still knows how to look shaggable because she sees the looks she get when she meets up with friends for drinks.

She couldn’t have imagined this life five years ago, back in Bristol, but now it sort of feels inevitable, like she was headed this direction all along.

She hasn’t been back because Mum moved to Birmingham during the spring of her first year away, and the times she met up with Jal were in London or that one time they went over to Dublin over the bank holiday and spent the whole weekend laughing so hard that her abs hurt when she got home (except for once, three o’clock in the morning and drunk on hard cider, when a laughing recollection of one of Chris’s crazier adventures had suddenly become Jal crying so hard she was gasping for breath and Michelle wrapping herself around her friend like she thought that she was the only thing holding the other girl together and maybe she was). And there was no _reason_ to go back when no one was there (no one except Chris’s grave)—this was at the beginning when Sid was still in New York—and then Sid and Cassie moved back, and then Cassie ran off, and then she came back, and then she wandered off again (and Michelle can admit that she’s never understood anything at all about Cassie or why Sid keeps getting pulled in, but if Tony is the one who pulls people to him, Sid is the one who always has to be a satellite for someone else). So Sid was the only one there, and that would have been reason enough to visit her hometown, but somehow it felt like seeing him might be too much, like it might steal away all the progress she’s made, strip away her grownup clothes and reveal her as Michelle-Tony’s-girlfriend who was maybe always trying a little bit too hard.

(And she’s self-aware enough that she knows that it isn’t because of Sid himself but because of how she can’t help but see Tony standing right beside him when she looks at him. She knows that’s not fair to Sid, to make him carry all of that baggage around with him, but she can’t _help_ it. She’s never been even slightly in control when it comes to Tony, and maybe that was the reason she loved him and maybe that was the reason she hated him and maybe that’s the reason she’s beginning to realize she’ll never be totally over him.)

But she’s been feeling more at home in her own body lately, like the lines between who she pretends to be (cosmopolitan, sophisticated, _grown up_ ) and who she really is (a townie from _Bristol_ ) are becoming more and more blurred to the point where she can actually imagine a time when they’ll disappear entirely.

So when Sid’s text invite comes (and she takes a second to puzzle out what it is exactly he’s trying to say amidst that mangling of the English language), she thinks, _Why not?_

(She really does. And maybe she also immediately thinks: _Will Tony be there, too?_ , but that thought is smaller and easily pushed aside.)

And she thinks she’s made the right decision when she opens the door to the not-so-posh flat (okay: it’s a total mess, but then it’s _Sid_ , so what did she expect) and glances around through the vaguely familiar faces and then sees Sid hurling himself at her. He’s always been the best at hugs, and she’s laughing as she wraps her arms around him, taller than him in her heels (they’re bright yellow, gorgeous, a shade only she could convince people doesn’t look like banana), and he smells the same, and this isn’t at all what she’d worried it might be like. Because she did worry: thought that maybe this would be like forcing herself back into a cage that she’s outgrown, but it isn’t like that at all. It’s just…visiting the place she grew up. It feels…good.

Cassie’s gone (again. She can never keep up with how many times those two have broken up and gotten back together) again, and as happy as Sid is to see her, he’s got that sort of sad puppy look that makes her want to cuddle him and tell him that everything’s going to be okay (it’s so weird to think that they actually slept together when he’s always been more like a brother to her, but then maybe it’s not so weird: it was their way of being as close to Tony as they could be at that point in time). They sit on the third-or-fourth-hand couch (it’s got stains she should probably be worried about, but she doesn’t even care) and ignore the rest of the partiers and he tells her about missing Cass and the work he’s doing (making t-shirts with an old machine in someone’s garage, and sometimes he even designs the prints himself—he’s never had any talent at art—and they’re totally ridiculous but never as ridiculous as his _stupid_ talking shirt).

And then Anwar burst through the door with a case of beer in one hand and a huge grin on his face and then there are more hugs and it’s weird how much they’re still all the same underneath it all (maybe still being a little bit Chelle-from-Bristol instead of Michelle-in-London isn’t such a bad thing). The three of them end up sitting around and telling stories all of them know the details to, correcting each other and interrupting and just laughing, and she _missed_ this. The music switches over to some really bad pop song that was huge when they were in Year 8, and of course they all remember every word and Anwar even remembers some of the dance that Maxxie choreographed, and she’s half-singing, half-shouting the lyrics between the gasping for breath (she hasn’t laughed this hard since the last time she was with Jal), more ridiculous than she’s been in forever (and her mascara is probably running down her cheeks and who knows what her hair is doing and she’s kicked off her heels and is stomping her bare feet to the beat), and of course that’s when she sees him.

It would be cliché to say that the music dies away to something soft and romantic and everyone else fades away like a half-developed black-and-white picture while he’s full color digital-sharp. But it isn’t like that: the music is still pounding and Anwar’s still flailing around like a dying fish and the crowd doesn’t part and she can even still breathe.

It isn’t like the movies, but it’s…intense.

He’s standing across the room in the doorway, and he’s looking at her (and it’s a look she’s never quite seen before, and that freaks her out more than a little, and of course-- _of course_ he can come up with a new way to unnerve her). And he’s even more beautiful than she remembered (and, okay, than his pictures on facebook can show), and, God: _that’s not fair_.

But that’s only for a split second, because then he realizes she’s noticed him and he _smirks_ (of course he does—it’s his mouth’s natural position), and she finds herself trapped in that place where she wants to jump him and wants to punch him all at once and _she thought she was past this_. She’d thought she’d outgrown him, with her very grown-up life, successful by just about any standard, and her functional relationships, and her hard-won confidence.

But then something shifts again, and the smirk falls away, like it was just an instinctual reaction. Instead, he smiles at her. And it’s _real_ , and genuine, and all it says is, _I’m happy to see you._

And she knows.

She knows he’s going to pull her back in again. Her ticket for the roller coaster is in her hand and there’s no turning back now. (And maybe she knew as soon as Sid’s text arrived. It doesn’t matter. She knows now.)

But it’s going to be different this time. Because he’s smiling at her, and yes, he’s gorgeous, but she’s not weak-kneed, even as she remembers that last night in his car.

 _We were good, weren’t we?_

 _We were better than that._

No, they weren’t. Not really. They were every kind of disaster it was possible to be, and sometimes—very occasionally—it was beautiful despite that, but there was nothing even slightly good about them.

But there could be this time. Because she’s got her own life now, and she’s more grown up than she thought, and she won’t be manipulated again. She realizes, right at this moment, that if he tried that again with her, she’d be able to walk away. And it would hurt, of course, but she wouldn’t regret it. She’s not his satellite any longer: she’s her own star, the center of her own galaxy, and nothing’s going to change that.

And something about the fact that he’s smiling at her tells her that he knows that.

This time, maybe, it really will be good. (Better than that.)

She didn’t really realize he was moving, but now he’s standing right in front of her and still smiling, and she’s smiling back.

“Hello, Tony.”

“Hello, Michelle.”

(And this is how they begin.)


End file.
